Ramscoop Drive
"Why the pale face there sonny? This your first trip in a Mining Frigate? Well don't you worry none. Berty here Ain't state of the art, but she's sturdy. Drive system like ours, the entire universe is filled with fuel we can use to make her go. The scoop sucks it in all the time. Generator Core guaranteed to last for At least a hundred years before needing servicing. So even if we're out in the far rim of the system we'll run outa food long before we run outa gas. See that's why I figure the company insists we have so many officers and mining Supervisors on board..." ~Mechanic Second-Class to a new worker, SMS Alberta ---- How it works By design, the Ramscoop Drive will run nearly the entire length of a ship. At the front end will be the Ramscoop that draws in interstellar gasses and particles and even small objects (in the latter case usually a "filter" grid or the like is used to break down small objects into sizes small enough to allow use in the drive, or will divert anything that may cause damage during acceleration to a Containment or processing device that will allow the item to be discarded or broken down and re-integrated into the accelerator). into the accelerator. There the particles are compressed and accelerated the length of the ship to be expelled out the back as thrust to drive the ship forward in accordance with the equal reaction of force. Some Ships will have Three or four ramscoops that will all feed into the accelerator, however one thing they have in common is that the accelerator will be as long as possible providing the most conversion of energy to thrust from expelled mass as possible. Some ships may even be nearly a Kilometer long with the rear half merely being the extension of the accelerator. Most cultures develop the Ramscoop drive as a precursor to faster than light travel as a way to solve the necessary carried fuel on board difficulty of traversing inter-stellar distances. Some Sleeper ships or Multi-generational vessels have been discovered with these drives still working after hundreds of solar cycles. In more modern systems, they are usually found in deep range survey or mining vessels within a system, performing tasks where speed is not an issue. They can maneuver to a asteroid or several. Link up to them and begin processing the material while in route back to their facilities, where the broken down remnants of those asteroids can almost literally be dumped right into the accelerator and provide thrust to the ship. ---- Benefits and Drawbacks Ships thus equipped aren't fast on acceleration, but don't need to carry internal fuel supplies for reaction mass, and so long as they have power they have the ability to continue a near constant thrust. So long as getting to a location rapidly isn't necessary, the fact that the ship is constantly stocking up on fuel while in transit makes it quite economical. Durability is another great benefit, short of the ramscoop trying to draw in small objects that could damage the internals, most accelerator systems can operate for centuries without needing much more than a minor re-calibration here and there. Non-thermal and reactionary does have the additional benefit of allowing such ships to operate within nebulae that may be volatile. Whereas a chemical, Impulse or ion drive may set off a combustion reaction within such volatile areas, the ramscoop drive merely draws such gasses in and accelerates them away. Nebula Gas miners use the ships to draw in the gasses, separate out which ones are profitable and then expel the ones they don't need back out as fuel for the engine. Speed, is of course, a big drawback. The drives are not fast at all, and the amount of propellant mass is dependent on what manner of interstellar material is nearby. In a system with a great deal of remaining particulate matter or high in interstellar gasses the drive performs better than one where there is little to be found. (Usually ships with this type of propulsion system will not be deployed to ancient near collapsed star systems without sufficient interstellar fuel to make the drives work, the particles are still there, in all cases due to the nature of the makeup of a star system and even interstellar space, it's just the infrequency of them limits the fuel intake supply.) Maneuvering is another difficulty. Due to the length of many of these ships and the nature of the accelerator it's difficult for the ship to maneuver in any real meaningful way. Mass may be expelled through various thrusters and vent systems, however overcoming the inertial force once the ship gets underway can take days for a major course correction. So a roundabout course using gravity wells and elliptical orbits from a central facility are usually the safest way to maneuver. Finding yourself on a collision course with something can be quite catastrophic if your ship takes ten hours to perform one or two degree course corrections.